


Faith

by WitchyBee



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-08
Updated: 2014-09-08
Packaged: 2018-02-16 14:52:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2273889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WitchyBee/pseuds/WitchyBee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A fire burned in her heart, white hot rage fueled by grief. Adaia’s funeral had been today. Lydia felt a bit like a small child now, lost and scared without her mother.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Faith

**Author's Note:**

> Posted on Tumblr a while ago. My Tumblr url is lesbianlavellan.

Lydia Tabris, fifteen years old, all skin-and-bones and scraggly red hair, sat on a low branch of the vhenadahl. She couldn’t face her father or cousins right now. Since most elves lived in one-room hovels with their extended families, solitude was only found up a tree.

A fire burned in her heart, white hot rage fueled by grief. Adaia’s funeral had been today. Lydia felt a bit like a small child now, lost and scared without her mother.

“Hey!” a voice called from below. “Mind if I come up there?”

Lydia expected Soris or Shianni or even her father. She did not expect to see Couldry, who had taken to calling himself Slim, an elf-blooded young man barely older than herself. Some elves treated him coldly because of his human appearance, but he had lived in the Alienage all his life. She’d grown up with him, and as far as Lydia was concerned, he was as much an elf as any one of them.

“Yeah, whatever,” she replied. He climbed the tree quickly—Alienage children learned to climb that tree soon after taking their first steps—and settled on the branch beside her.

“How ya holdin’ up, Liddy?”

“How d’you think?” she scoffed. “Ma is dead. An’ don’t you dare say you’re sorry, ‘cause it won’t bring her back.”

“No, it won’t,” Slim agreed. “But…at least she’s with the Maker now.”

“You really believe that stuff?” Lydia asked, genuinely surprised. She’d lost faith in absent gods and their human prophets long ago. It was all just empty words to her.

“Yeah, I really do.” He sighed. “If I’m honest, I s’pose it’s harder to believe some days.”

Lydia didn’t speak for a while, and when she did, her voice sounded shaky and uneven. She was a tree branch about to snap in two. “Bastards told the guards it was self-defense, that she’d pulled a knife on ‘em. Ma only carried the dagger to protect herself, y’know, it was a family heirloom! She wouldn’t hurt nobody! Just bloody senseless—” Lydia’s voice broke, tears blurring her vision.

Slim Couldry, not knowing what else to do, hesitantly embraced her. Lydia had not cried since she learned of her mother’s death, but now she sobbed in his arms. It was finally becoming real to her. All the things Adaia wouldn’t be there for—Lydia’s inevitable arranged marriage, the birth of her first child, countless name days and Satinalias she’d miss…

Truthfully, Slim was half in love with Lydia Tabris, as most boys in the Alienage were. But this had nothing to do with him at all. He knew that in a moment Liddy would dry her eyes and go home like nothing happened, because she had to be strong for her family. Slim Couldry said a silent prayer for Adaia’s soul. She’d been a good woman who deserved better than to die like a criminal. The chantry didn’t hold funerals for elves—not that Liddy’s father could afford it anyway—and Cyrion had built the pyre himself. Mother Boann was unable to perform the rite, so Valendrian gave a eulogy instead.

He was no priest, obviously, but he did have faith, even though this world tested the limits of that faith constantly, so he prayed: _Maker, take Adaia Tabris to rest at Your side. Our Lady Andraste, You know those men killed her without cause and got away with it; you know their sins. Forgive me, Our Lady, but may those sodding bastards never find peace. Let ‘em rot in the void. So let it be._


End file.
